Sentient Computer ?????

This is a discussion on Sentient Computer ????? within the A Brief History of Cprogramming.com forums, part of the Community Boards category; "Hmm. A computer having an opinion"
A computer can already be programmed to have an opinion on a given topic, ...

A computer can already be programmed to have an opinion on a given topic, programming a computer to work out opinions is of course a little harder

"So that means that a computer can make an interpretation of happenings, a book, a painting and think about it? "

A computer can use algorithms to analyse a painting, or a book for that matter..........as for "thinking about it", when we "think" about stuff, all that happens is that we are aware (to a limited degree) of the inner workings of our brain.

"It can also think: I don't like that music?

It could be programmed to display signs of dislike when hearing certain types of music.

"And it is also possible that a computer creates a painting? A painting which expresses some feeling? "

There is already a robot painter in existance, the paintings are quite good, though of the abstract variety.

When you talk about expression of a feeling, of course things get more complicated, but on a basic level, AI can already alter the responce it gives depending on its "mood", which in turn depends on various external factors.

"So you think that it is possible that we can recreate the brain? Perhaps in a technological way, we will be able to recreate the brain. But in my opinion a person is not just a brain. A person also has a personality, built up through the years. This requires a lot of biological processes which I think we can't recreate. And if we are able to, then biological would turn out to be technology. Which implies that also evolution can be recreated"

A person IS just a brain, your personality, memories are all stored in your brain, your feelings, senses, everything is processes in your brain forming the person that you are. That much has been proven countless times, there are plenty of examples that show that people who have trauma to a particular part of the brain can get complete new personalities after the accident.

Biology isn't magic its just chemistry.

Consider this, if we could use a piece of silicon that had the same electrical and chemical properties of a cell, then we could build an artificial brain that would have the exact same properties as a biological brain.

Evolution can certainly be replicated, infact recently they have managed to get a computer to design circuits by using evolutionary principles.

It is biology, chemistry, physics and perhaps also technology. But then it the question comes to mind: what is technology? Isn't technology something that is created by humans?

When it comes to nanotechnology, we are able to play with atoms. This could mean that we are able to play with or even perform biological processes with nanotechnology. In that case we could be able to manipulate atoms in such a way they form cells. The next, very big, step would be to create primitive life. So perhaps it's possible to create life.

on a different tangent...
are chimps sentient ??
any other animal ??
are we the only sentient life ??

yes i think we are. why ??

something happened in the brain of a primitive man/ape... that
little spark which we can't explain...and eventually here we are, the only sentient life on our planet. no other animal including all the types of apes has become sentient. we are the only "intelligent" life.
whatever it was, a genetic mutation ???, i think it was like a snowball effect once it started.

i think if we can give a machine that little spark of something.....if it can then start to learn for itself, i think it could snowball..........

"When it comes to nanotechnology, we are able to play with atoms. This could mean that we are able to play with or even perform biological processes with nanotechnology. In that case we could be able to manipulate atoms in such a way they form cells. The next, very big, step would be to create primitive life. So perhaps it's possible to create life."

You don't need nano-tech to play with biological processes, regular biochemistry will do that, we can already build proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, even DNA, in the lab. Of course building an entire cell from the ground up is a far cry from molecular components.

Though there are several teams around the world who have taken the simplest bacterium, knocked out as many genes as they can from it but not so many that its not still alive, and are now trying to "build" thus cut down bacterium in a lab.

Nanotech is the field I intend to go into, at the moment the techonology is very basic, but it has tremendous potential.

There is a molecule out there, the precursor to DNA, that formed from a swathe of complex equilibria, and that was capable of replicating itself but not exactly... finding that molecule would be nice

"on a different tangent...
are chimps sentient ??
any other animal ??
are we the only sentient life ??"

Chimps are considered sentient as are dolphins, there are a series of test, that are performed. One of which is to see whether animals recognise themselves in a mirror, you smear lipstick over the right eye of an ape then show them the mirror and they will wipe off the lipstick. If an animal can recognise itself, it means it has a concept of "self" and hence we conclude it is aware.

Now, it could be a trick, we could design a computer that would NOT be aware to do something similar, but we are dealing with evolutionary principles, where "tricks" like this won't happen: there is noadvantage in "pretending" to be sentient.

<<something happened in the brain of a primitive man/ape... that
little spark which we can't explain...and eventually here we are, the only sentient life on our planet. no other animal including all the types of apes has become sentient. we are the only "intelligent" life.
whatever it was, a genetic mutation ???, i think it was like a snowball effect once it started>>

This doesn't really prove your point. All you are saying is that "Humans are sentient because humans are the only living thing that are sentient"

Without a doupt apes and dolphins are sentient and as my first vitness I call clyde (see prev post) I would like to say that almost all animals are sentient just on different levels but i don't have any prof handy right now.

Todays approaches to AI seam to only work on very specific problems, most of which are just clever ways of cutting down search spaces (eg CSP's,GA's neural nets) and dont seam to have much to do with actually 'simulating' intelligence. I think we need the einstein of computer science/neurology to bridge the gap between todays approaches and actuall 'life'. If it is possible/when it comes, will computers become more intelligent than humans? shouldnt be too hard.

I like the analogy I once read between AI and aeronautics:

'For hundreds of years humans tried to fly by imitating the birds flapping wings, then they invented the airofoil'

"Todays approaches to AI seam to only work on very specific problems, most of which are just clever ways of cutting down search spaces (eg CSP's,GA's neural nets) and dont seam to have much to do with actually 'simulating' intelligence."

I'm not so sure, whilst the techniques used today in AI are certainly limited, neural nets inparticular have shown interesting promise.

A robot has been built that has "learnt" to produce a range of facial expressions that look extremely human.

The problem is that whilst neural nets can be quite good at modelling some of the basic type of learning we see in babies, they suck at higher functions.

True AI "intelligence" does seem quite a long way off, though with technology progressing as it is, who knows....

i thought only humans were sentient. does sentient just mean self-aware in a basic level?? humans are the only creatures to believe in god for instance, to commit suicide etc

i meant sentient as intelligent. we are the only intelligent life form surely. i know chimps, dolphins are pretty intelligent, but its not what we mean by intelligent life really.

what i meant by a little spark is......well chimps and dolphins have been around as long or longer than humans, why aren't they intelligent ??? why did only one strain of ape evolve, the rest staying pretty much as they are?? guess nobody knows do they??

humans are the only species to have the extended frontal lobes, that does most of the 'intelligent' thinking.

i guess its debatable how intelligent other animals are...
but interestingly i saw a prog that said the best test of intelligence in animals was brain weight divided by body weight.......

if you do that, humans have (by far) the best score, followed by chimps, then other apes, then dolphins...........which would seem to bear out.

Its my impression that neural nets are just fancy statistical estimators,(although it could be argued that this is what the brain is aswell?) If you have enough sample points then its easy to find a 'probability' of corectness. A sample point is basically all a perceptron is. As far as I know they have only been used for taxonomy purposes (classifiers)

"A robot has been built that has "learnt" to produce a range of facial expressions that look extremely human. "

I've not heard of this and would appreciate a link if you have one. However I'm willing to bet this is done by using a training set to teach the machine to classify different expressions, then all the machine has to do is categorise any future sets of data...

I think the way AI research is progressing is to try and find ways of making programs learn in what appears to be the same way as humans do. Rather than look at the mechanisms by which humans learn (which we don't really know enough about at this point)

"I've not heard of this and would appreciate a link if you have one. However I'm willing to bet this is done by using a training set to teach the machine to classify different expressions, then all the machine has to do is categorise any future sets of data... "

Unfortuneately I have no link, it was on a program I watched quite a while ago. The robot was placed in an environment with people around, and made facial expressions, if the facial expression resulted in attention from the surrounding people it was reinforced. Since people react to human-like expressions, eventually the robot ended up smiling, then if people left him frowning (people often came back if it frowned when they left), + it made a variety of other human like expressions.

Fact of the day: There is a region of the brain specifically for recognising faces, people who have damage in this region function completely normally....except they can no longer visually recognise anyone, even their own children/spouses!

>>Sentient merely means "aware" or concious. You don't need to believe in God to be aware, nor do you need to be capable of commiting suicide.
There is a difference between intelligence and sentience, one is basically problem solving ability, the other is something more esoteric.

i thought sentient meant self-aware, in the sense that say i know i'm a human being, i live on a planet etc.........only humans have this......
i must use the term wrong. mebe i watch too much star-trek !!!!!
anyway, humans are the only intelligent life, i know chimps are smart etc, my cat is fairly smart, but you know what i mean by intelligent.....

>>Because everything in evolution is a trade off, in many instances more intelligence is NOT favourable, greater intelligence requires a bigger brain which needs more energy and hence more food.

yeah, bacteria etc will probably outlive us..........and cockroaches

>>"why did only one strain of ape evolve, the rest staying pretty much as they are?? "
They didn't, both apes and us have a common ancester, we did not evolve from modern day apes.

i know, but the ancestor was ape-like i meant.
in the time-frame of humans evolving intelligence at an exponential rate, chimps sat in trees eating bananas, and guerrillas scratched their butts.!!!
what happened to make humans the only intelligent life. something did. its unique in our planet(so far at least-who knows what may happen in the billions of years our planets got left), i doubt if its unique in the universe.

"i thought sentient meant self-aware, in the sense that say i know i'm a human being, i live on a planet etc.........only humans have this....."

Self aware means that you are aware that you exist, it does not require any other knowledge.

Ape's are most certainly aware they exist, the lipstick experiment proves that.

"i know, but the ancestor was ape-like i meant. "

We are apes too ya know

"in the time-frame of humans evolving intelligence at an exponential rate, chimps sat in trees eating bananas, and guerrillas scratched their butts.!!! "

Humans evolved no faster than the other apes.

"what happened to make humans the only intelligent life. something did."

There is no magic here, an ape is effectively a human with a lame IQ, in the particular environment we were in 500,000 - a million years ago, increases in intelligence and language were an advantage........... hence we are at the level of intelligence we are at.

Of course if we wiped all life and started again, intelligent life may not immerge, just luck really, getting the right environment and an organism capable of exploiting it.